Glacial Rainbow
by Mattathias
Summary: Reality is a multiplicity of cessations: of an empire, of a peace, of a way of life, of an injustice, of a childhood, of a marriage. Politics, theology, and kung-fu amid frozen clouds and a dubiously dormant volcano. Knowledge of Exalted unnecessary (I think.)
1. Prelude: Ten Thousand Paces

"Yes, it _is_ rather voluminous for a book about Nothing, isn't it?"

I didn't answer the question. It was clearly a signal that the last thing I had said was unwise, perhaps even – well, not fatally, but… - perhaps even very unfortunate. I didn't want to make a habit of it.

He draws a finger across the volumes, as though trying to remember something. When I had gotten here I hadn't expected a man who would _try_ to do things; I was expecting, perhaps, a sort of unmediated nexus between intention and effect. A volume of light in the shape of a man, not a man itself, furrowing his brow like I furrow mine, trying to think sincerely. I had expected something whose lack of imperfections would condescend to instantly evaporate my own, not –

"But it's not a book about nothing, not really, any more than the journey is the destination or the maze is this room. It says little about Nothing, which is of course too much, admitted blasphemy; '_whereof one cannot speak_,' as the scriptures say,'_one must remain silent_.' That's blasphemy too; one cannot silently prescribe silence."

"So the scriptures contradict themselves?" There is a sense in which he does wash my imperfections away, but it is a slow way, scraping off the lacquer first to reveal the grime underneath. I am totally honest in his presence; it is a magnification of my faults. The heretic is revealed, when he had hidden so successfully from himself.

"Of course. That should be obvious." Now I am castigated for my stupidity instead. "And contradictions are to be…?"

"Resolved."

"Resolved, yes. Eliminated, is another way of phrasing it. The point of the scriptures is not to describe reality as it should be, but as it is, and what it is is contradictory. That's why change happens.

"In the First Age of Men, when philosophic controversies were a matter of popular dispute, metaphysical positions were divided north-by-south and east-by-west: 'Unity' against 'Multiplicity,' 'Being' against…"

He lectures on known matters; as punishment, I think. My obviously dull answers thus far have robbed me of the right to protest my scholarship, and yet I retain enough that I don't listen fully, stewing indignantly instead. Should I seize the moment at one of these pauses, complete a sentence? But I've missed enough, and the teacher is peripatetic enough, that I might well have missed his already saying it, and so dig my ditch deeper.

"…exile here, realized that the second dichotomy was quite wrong, or incomplete, and that we should be asking about the Unity or Multiplicity of _Nonbeing or Cessation_. In truth, there are two poles. Of the Unity of Nonbeing we can say only as much as you do now. '_Of the destination I cannot speak, and I cannot see, but commit the Practices and I can non-see it_.' But of the maze… Existing reality is a multiplicity of cessation. One can, and must, write volumes about it, for its contradictions beg resolution by the honest scholar. That is what brought you here, isn't it?" He looks at me quizzically, with enough compassion to imply that he has forgiven me so long as I have not forgiven myself.

I consider my answer carefully this time. Perhaps _silence_ is correct – that's what my instinct would be if this scene were a riddle told – but he doesn't look satisfied by it. Perhaps honesty is the best policy – no, no, absolutely honesty is the best policy, have I any doubt that he can read even the consideration of dishonesty on my face? I did not come here to usefully solve conundra for him; just the opposite. My braving the maze would prove my devotion, and my own problems would resolve in his mere presence, and after that there would be nothing, not so far as I'm concerned. But that's my subjective intentions only. He didn't ask about those, did he? He asked what brought me here in fact, what transformed my being elsewhere to here. And as a matter of simple logic, it follows that:

"Yes, but not from my knowing so."

He smiles with a compassion that this time is full; overflowing, even, and I feel the tension melt from my body – ascending upwards from my feet, as in meditation; first my toes, feet, legs, torso, and on to the rest of me, scrunching up and then relaxing. He picks up a knife and then it's all jolted again, with something like sexual anticipation, and he places it in my hand.

"Transformation through contradiction," he says. "Now, my daughter, I want you to freely do what you came here for, but not to intend to – do you understand?"

I nod – first lying, then truthfully. I press the knife lightly to my throat. Blood trickles out. I want it; for I am at the gate at the end of the maze, beyond which one can say nothing, certainly nothing stupid. It's so close. He cannot enforce his command; certainly not the latter half, why should I obey it? Because of the conviction that brought me here? I thought only that the desire for death was enough, but I now realize it was not – that the scriptures are correct when they say it is universal, and that the virtue in admitting it is only the first of many. Ten thousand virtues, ten thousand paces in the maze.

I realize the knife is digging in deeper, and more fully than before how much pleasure I've been feeling at it – stop, stop… Stop! The knife has to work its way through when I don't want it to, and now I do. How? Only if I am not at the one moment the same as the next. Only if I murder genuinely, kill a victim who is screaming out to live, and will to survive as that killer. I focus on that thought, shunt away the pleasure, plunge in,

_Yes! I shall bear every burden! All sorrows, all calumnies, on me!_ There's another voice in my head, a gentle, prodding voice, asking me something, but I only scream assent at it. _Make my pilgrimage as long as it must!_

I'm already dying in every moment, I realize, that's the trick; the me who is _now_ is not the me who is to be, is not _this_ now, or _this_. The only moves I can ever make are altruistic; I can only ever spare, or need to spare, others, perhaps others very similar to myself. We are, this world, a multiplicity of cessation, yearning towards a unity of nonbeing.

He stands over me and smiles. I do not feel me breathing but I can feel me being. There are ten thousand paces in the maze and I have only been two.


	2. Rumors and Heresies

On the coldest month of the year, when the clouds north of the White Sea freeze over, Ledaal Kamro Jelad was summoned to Mount Helakki to investigate rumors of heresy.

"There's a monastery there. Let the rimpoches take care of it," she had said.

"That presumes I want them to know about it. They have bigger things to worry about than what happens to poor Creation, don't they? And they're no one's kin."

"Your daughter's husband is kin, and it's his satrapy."

"Cathak Zulo is also an idiot, and I'm an idiot for making him kin. I'd have thought her widowed and remarried quick enough, the way he carries himself, but I'd forgotten all the old idiots the world is blessed with. Go on, now, obey your aunt; prove that there's one competent Kamro left." And that was that.

She set out by sea, and then by sky, and then by skis, sliding along the long stretches of cloud, using kites and climbing gear to graduate up from the cumulonimbus to cirrostratus, until she was at level with, and in view of, the Holy City on Mount Helakki. "Not many get to see it like this," she said to her lone companion and daughter, wishing she had some words to do it justice, or that the girl's father were there, for he would. The sight itself was enough; glaciers floating in a sea of air, swirling around a snowcapped, smoke-spewing island of ancient-hewn rock. A rainbow had frozen too, though not before passing and refracting through a glacier; it looked like nothing so much as a bright caltrop or starburst jutting out from the ice, bleeding out greens and indigos to splash and coat the icy platforms. Clouds floated too close to the smoke and transformed to sooty rain. It was quite inaccessible to general traffic; the city was in hermitage this time of year.

"A mortal woman's lungs would have frozen half this high, you know. They can only live there because of the heat of Helakki itself. This is but one of the privileges and exhilarations that is your birthright, and each one comes with a corresponding duty…"

"Yeah. I'll be sure to ask the Dragons what this one's is. Thank you, mother."

Had she been such a little shit at that age, too?

* * *

Helakki lay at the intersection of some trade routes and an unbelievable number of Dragon Lines – supposedly twenty-two; a mere seven, according to more sober sources – making it the site of a formidable demesne of the Aspect of Air. The devil-kings of yore, it was said, had capped the demesne with a manse to do it justice, entrapping a million persons in a tesseract of a palace no bigger than a city block floating above the caldera. In modern times Helakki had to make due with mere grandeur, employing the carved smokestack into a city. From the perspective of the Realm, the rudely repaired manse was still the Holy City's most significant feature, the source of its name; the monastery had become a site of pilgrimage, and it was said that Mela herself had sat in contemplation for a year there, after she had stolen the words that command demons, and had to consider whether there was anything she could wisely and justly do with them. For most of its inhabitants the Holy City was just "here," or "home," or the place where pelts became arrowheads, and the great tower overlooking ashfields that made this the only arable ice for quite a ways. It was the travelers' job to gawk, or to pray. Those born there prayed too, as all men do, but according to their own traditions. For the most part the monks did not concern them and they did not concern the monks. The men and women who seemed very determined to practice doing nothing took their bread, but they brought tourists with jade, too, and it all seemed to even out. The countrymen of the monks carried away jade on a strict schedule, but they had arms enough to rout all challengers (had been the belief until very recently.) The well-armed foreigners had an outpost, a small but fine gold-gated palazzo in a chic section of the smokestack, and it was to there that Ledaal Kamro Jelad and Ledaal Kamro Kesari set ski to treat with their cousin.

* * *

"So Mother doesn't trust me to sort this out myself?"

"Not at all, Zulo; she holds you in the highest regard. It's just that she _is_ a mother, is all; we don't like to take risks."

"Oh? Is that why you brought Kesari here to get pneumonia and fall off a cloud?"

"Does she look like she's got pneumonia and fallen off a cloud?"

Kesari looked up from her cider to show a grin two spans wide. A maidservant had brought her court clothes, but she chose to conspicuously stay in her gear. "Mother slipped in the wind once and I had to throw her a line."

"If you're going to exaggerate, little cousin," said the Satrap, "go bigger. Say a dragon of lightning attacked you and you had to seduce his sister to win the battle. Exaggerate small and you're just a liar. Exaggerate big and you're fit to be a skald. They respect that art here. You'll get a lot of inroads with the men that way."

"Trying to set my daughter up with one of your savages? 'Good enough for a lightning dragon, good enough for the chieftain?'"

"Not at all, it's just that the men are the braggarts here, and women the diplomats. A lot of things are backwards. I think it has to do with patrilocality – unlike in civilization, the reputable families here follow the male line. Leads to a lot of unreliable succession and infighting, but perhaps they just like fighting each other. They think women have the more complex inner lives as well."

"I'll have to work on getting one, then. Should my daughter and I paint ourselves up like men, too?"

"No, they'll respect you more if you don't stoop to their level, and besides, that doesn't vary anyway. Some things are universal, I guess. Look at birds. It's always the males with the more colorful feathers."

Kesari looked up from her cider again. "I've read that the Delzahn –"

" – yes, my precocious little cousin, but the Delzahn are perverts."

At that the three Dynasts had a hearty laugh, and sky-eel was served with fermented herring.

* * *

Another Hela custom, it seemed, was tardiness, accompanied by inebriation. This was as true of Zulo's officials as it was of autochthonous elites. The Holy City's coinmaster came in unannounced, kissed the Satrap thrice on the hands, and regaled (so far as he was able) with a story of fiscal derring-do: "…and the promissory note, indeed, had been delivered to her – tattooed on the interior of a bondsman!" The god of the Hellakki itself, cohabitating (alongside some considerable slosh of wormwood) the body of a priest-princess, said little but laughed much, motioning sometimes to be fed or massaged as offerings: "You ever… you ever rolled around with a god? Well… well you won't tonight either… not if that's what you meant… well not what I meant either… I mean… _this here_… is so much better than the other thing, you… you have no idea." Zulo's court sorcerer drank clear stiff spirits – the whiff of it was enough for Kesari – but seemed unaffected by them: "Of course, during the Shogunate, the remains of the former manse were unfortunately stripped for…" A thin woman sipped her drink slowly, and when Jelad pressed, was unable to say anything of note upon her special competence; Jelad was unable to determine whether the abstemious guest was sinecure, spymaster, or if architectural inspection was simply as boring as it looked.

"It's a matter of courtesy," explained a (relatively) early local guest, a plump fishing magnate. "Kin should have time to talk and drink among kin first, and get their gossip out of the way. We strangers will file in afterwards, drunken too, so as not to take undo advantage." And then she burped and set upon the herring, inquiring whether it was to the everyone's satisfaction.

"Courtesy, nonsense; Samfi and I are drunk for the same reason we're fat," said her friend, "the fucking cold. Don't you ice-veined children of Mela suppose we get used to it; no, growing up here we just get fed up with the bite earlier." The man was a major landholder on the ashfields in the shadow of the mountain; his latifundia grew potatoes, squash, lovers' leaf, and – by some ingenious secret – wine. "No one would live here willingly. I only remain here out of my ardent patriotism, a patriotism," he clarified, raising his cider, "that recognizes the inseparable bonds between Helakki and the Dynasty, long may it reign, soon may the Empress return, swift may the hordes of the Bull be routed." And at the warlord's title he spat, emphatically, and took a deep draught. "For you dragons routed the chaos gnawing at the edge of the world, and you routed the devil-kings, and" – he made a motion like swatting a fly – "you crush all manner of terrors, so that good women and men can go about their business.

"I myself, despite my girth, cannot crush so much. But I'll tell you this! I do my part. Some of my bondsmen, I'm awfully shamed to tell, were swept up in some macabre cult. Would castrate themselves, sabotage the crops, even bloodlet poor little babies to talk to their ancestors, and not very virtuous ones, I must suppose. Sacrificing the future on the altar of the past! 'Liberty!,' they'd cry, 'liberty in naught!' Well, I'm something of a libertarian myself. They can travel where they like on the estate or ramble to others for the night, hunt all that passes there but the sacred hunt, and I don't split families. No midnight patrols of the cabins over my ash, no, not until this year. And what does it earn me? Nihilism, terrorism, mutilation, probably demonolatry. Two of my uplifted men were lynched – dunked underwater and chained to a post. And for what?

"They said they were the White Fields Movement. Said they were going to walk off the black ground and into the white, where all their problems would disappear, which I suppose they would. Some do that, certainly. The last pilgrimages of the elders are sometimes practiced here. But they were here, they certainly weren't doing that, the ice is right here, so it was some other form of madness. I've always educated them in virtue, and as a gentle man – as you've surely guessed – I'm a breeder, not an importer, at least as much as one can be this far north; damned cold! So I suspected outside influence. Maybe some of those hungry ghosts too weak in life to kill themselves and who set themselves to whispering madness in men's ears – not that any soul expires weak on my ash, I swear on Pasiap's cock (pardon, dragons) they are near as plump as I, for I know how to coax the leaves from the cold ground – maybe some true icewalkers of the old type, hoping to weaken my flock to seize my lands. Well, I sent out patrols – because I had volunteered my better men for the Realm's defense, and did not want to beg on the on the good Satrap's aid for a problem that could be solved internally, I felt obliged to assist with the only warrior left I could trust, to whit myself – and sought to catch these stealer's of souls. Many freeholders, being like the rest of their class (and not enough of my own, I should add) natural patriots, endeavored to assist as well. And do you know what we found?"

A tall man raised his chalice. "I was in your party, Horkkemmi, I should know!"

"Oh, it's an open question whether any of us _knows_ or not," said Horkkemmi, raising his own cup, and nodding, "but please, bring the Holy City's newest guests into as much sunlight as we stand in."

"Oh, it's a story without much sunlight, and there's a little dragon egg here," he said, nodding at Kesari, "so I'll have to leave much in the night where it belongs…"

And he began his tale.


End file.
